All eyes in the world of sports this morning are focused keenly on the Commonwealth of Kentucky, where there appears to be a preponderance of evidence that the University of Louisville organized private sex shows for basketball recruits. It’s a scandalous, salacious story that half of the state is sick about, and the other half is gleefully gloating about. You see, in the Bluegrass, you are often defined by which of the state’s basketball powerhouses’ logo you have chosen to adorn your car. If you are a Kentucky fan, you simply cannot drive a red car. If you are a Louisville fan, you would never dream of wearing a blue shirt. Every single flight I take to Lexington has at least five people wearing UK logowear, and often it’s as much as half of the plane’s passengers that are so attired.
But, I digress. There is one figure that is even more polarizing within the context of this rivalry, and his name is Rick Pitino. For those of you who don’t live and breathe college basketball, or even those who do but do it outside the borders of Kentucky, you may not know that there is nobody who is simultaneously revered and reviled like Pitino is. He led Kentucky to an NCAA title in 1996 and a runner-up finish in 1997, and then fled for the greener pastures of the NBA, only to return to college coaching with his tail between his legs after massive failures in both Boston and New York.
When he returned, however, he returned to the one school that UK fans could never forgive him for choosing—their archenemy, Louisville. Even worse, he turned Louisville into a national power again, winning a title in 2013.
It looks like he may have done it using some less-than-wholesome methods, though. In less than an hour, ESPN will have a live interview with the former escort who alleges that the ‘Ville paid her around $10K to provide strippers and escorts to prospective players when they visited the campus. Pitino has, thus far, claimed ignorance of the entire situation. However, if the allegations prove to be true (and everybody says that she appears to be credible), then it’s hard to imagine that Pitino survives.
But is it really that hard to imagine?
After all, this is the man who previously survived the Karen Sypher extortion scandal. He claims to have had no knowledge of this latest scandal, that it was all perpetrated by Andre McGee, a former player, assistant, and Director of Basketball Operations at Louisville. While it’s certainly damning news if it turns out that Pitino was unaware of these sex parties for recruits, it’s less damning than if he was aware.
Let’s be honest, here. While it would be untrue to say that this sort of thing happens everywhere in big college athletics, it wouldn’t be untrue to say that things like this happen everywhere. While Louisville may be unique in actually paying professionals to come into the dorms and perform sex acts for recruits, it is virtually accepted practice for recruits at major universities to be assigned a “hostess” to accompany them for the weekend. These hostesses are university students who are given the responsibility of making sure that the recruit enjoys himself. That can mean anything. I can assure you that I will NEVER allow my daughter to be a “Gator Getter” or whatever they’re called at your university of choice. While I wasn’t a high-profile college recruit coming out of school, I had many friends who were, and the stories they told made me pretty jealous. And that was twenty years ago, when our young people were much less sexualized than kids coming out of high school today are.
In fact, I suspect that the reason that the U of L took this path was to keep the exploits from becoming public through social media. If they controlled the kids’ phones during these private sex parties, then there was no chance that pictures could get out onto Twitter and Instagram of eighteen-year-olds doing shots at strip clubs. They probably figured—hey, they’re gonna do this while they’re here, anyway. Let’s maintain some sense of control over it, shall we? And, frankly, I prefer that they bring in professionals rather than have college girls act as unpaid hookers.
So, much like the Joe Paterno scandal, I suspect that it will all come down to what Pitino knew, and when he knew it. Pitino has already proven to be a man of flimsy personal character—he’s no Joe Paterno, whom we all knew to be of the highest possible fiber. Or, at least we thought we did. We all saw what happened to Paterno. Maybe we need to stop hiring men of Italian descent whose names begin with “P” and end in “O.” It’s probably a coincidence, but it’s just a thought.
Once again, it all comes down to winning. Pitino survived the Sypher scandal, and then promptly brought a title to Cardinal Nation. If he had never won there, they’d be happy to send him out of town on the next riverboat. However, when you hang banners, it gets trickier. If the University, either directly or indirectly, provided alcohol and sex to high school juniors and seniors, everybody involved has to go, from the AD down.
I guess we’ll find out whether or not the university, one of the most respected public universities in America, values winning over all.
The culture surrounding college (and in many cases high school) sports is utterly bewildering. Sooner or later something will happen that is big enough to bring it all down. I thought Penn State would have been that event, but I guess not. I normally can’t stand Keith all demand, but his rant about PSU students/backers being more concerned with paterno’s legacy was spot on.
Keith Olbermann. Damn smartphones.
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1768255-oklahoma-state-football-profiled-in-sis-shocking-5-part-investigative-report?utm_source=cnn.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=editorial&hpt=hp_t2
Oklahoma State basically using coeds as prostitutes to recruit top athletic talent. Some wisdom from a dude I know who commented on that story:
“Firstly, these girls were going to be fucking somebody at college. Lots of college girls will fuck anyone that will stand still long enough. It’s a target rich environment and if you have even the slightest inkling to play the game you can have a coed riding your dick in no time. I know of instances where campus police officers got caught fucking coeds while in uniform…IN THEIR CRUISER…
Not to get out of a ticket or a charge…just for sport.
So you have these girls who are going to fuck somebody, and here’s an organization where membership gets you access. Access to contacts, internships, business leaders (because rich, important types love their alma mater football programs)…access to everything that the university’s sparkling reputation brings together in a convenient nexus that everybody pretends is totally on the up and up. Money, power, networking, the lot. And all they have to do to get access to this world is help recruit top athletic talent. Usually top male athletic talent. And do you know how you impress an 18 year old, who as we all can remember from our youth is basically just a life support system for a perpetual hard-on? A threesome is a fucking awesome start.
Those girls have plenty of self esteem. They’re all cute. If you could find a group photo I guarantee you won’t see fatties or uggos. It’s a group of pretty, outgoing girls who were social climbers in K-12 and they’ll be social climbers in college and social climbers out of college. If all they have to do is throw some pussy at a recruit every now and then to get all the perks, it’s a fucking bargain. And, hey…he might even be cute and funny. So why not?
I know instances where dudes who have a hell of a lot less going for them than a heavily recruited athlete are making coeds two at a time and the coeds aren’t getting shit out of the deal except the ropes they take to the face at the end. These chicks were making one hell of a bargain. They were getting access to the upper echelons of society for doing nothing more than what a bunch of other girls on the campus are doing anyway. Some for things as low as grades or personal use pot. Hell, buddy of mine busted a dealer who was making so much money at a college that he priced in sexual favors from the cute girls buying from him. The girls could have paid the money because they had it, but they chose to trade handies/blowies/vagina/anal for whatever amount of wowie they wanted.
The girls luring the football players with their feminine charms and getting the finest perks the university could offer were making a MUCH better deal.
Welcome to higher education, folks. It’s no different than any other business. These girls were using their assets to leverage themselves into a better position. Same as it ever was, same as it ever shall be.”
Damn I wish I had gone to UVA at age 18 like I should have!!
(actually my older brother is such a dork that he spent 4 years in Charlottesville and probably never got laid a single time. I’m sure I would have done better)
I like how it’s automatically the women who are somehow in the wrong here.
I guess you missed the bit about “everybody” pretending that this whole arrangement was on the up and up. Everybody involved knew the score. The athletes played ball. The girls helped recruit the athletes with sex. The people buying boxes at the stadium cheered it all on. The university officials cashed the checks.
carrya1911: You seem to understand politics and sexuality better than any random pseudonymous commenter I can recall having seen in some time. Get a blog wouldja!
Bark: “I will NEVER allow my daughter to be a “Gator Getter”” << Would you also deny your daughter admission into law school if she were so inclined and met the requirements ? Now I haven't seen a picture of your daughter, but in the unlikely chance that she's even physically qualified to be a Gator Getter, let her work to her strengths and hope for the best, whatever that may mean to her.
Can you explain your reason for quoting that? I’m curious.
If I had to develop an ad hoc ex post rationalisation to satisfy your curiousity, I’d guess that it’s because this pretense of control over your daugher and your faux moral superiority was the silliest and most nonsensical element of your article, as I believe carrya1911’s aptly illustrates.
Bark and Jack may be quasi-public, internet famous figures, but that is the kind of thing that can earn you a punch in the mouth IRL.
That’s such an unbelievably vague threat as to imbue only the sincerest knowledge that no such thing would ever take place. The kind of thing! Can earn! Mkay. Good thing I have this sooper sekrit pseudonym to protect me from pugilistic internet vigilantes eh.
Hey. Quit being a douche. This isn’t a Gawker site. Thanks.
Is that a pun on my surname ?
No, you’re just being a douche.
That wasn’t a threat, vague or otherwise. Lucky for your smug, hipster dbag face there aren’t too many real dads left, but if you start talking about someone’s daughter like that don’t be surprised when you are swallowing your own teeth.
Inb4 Bark (and random commenter guy) opens a book and discovers that Mata Hari and Theodora (Justinian I’s wife) couldn’t have achieved respect and greatness without leveraging the incredible power of their female sexualities. So to deny your daughter this power – to wish that she were the son you actually wanted instead, the one that would become a doctor or lawyer – is WORSE than Saudis who don’t let their women drive.
Why worse? Because at least Saudis ADMIT THEY’RE BEING CONTROLLING.
The question becomes:
What do “Gator Getters” earn in exchange for their work?
If every “Gator Getter” receives a check for $10M (in Bitcoins, just for you, Pete) and a guaranteed appointment to a Fortune 500 boards, then allow me to be the first gay-for-pay Gator Getter.
If what they in fact get is a few college credits and a starring role in a 17-year-old linebacker’s sex video, then it’s a pretty bad deal, isn’t it?
Did you play football? I would bet my lifetime salary you didn’t.
I did. And if you think what these football players are doing to these women is helping them “leverage their power,” then you’re an even bigger fool than you are currently appearing to be.
Aha! I was hoping that cooler heads would arrive eventually. (/me waves at Jack).
So Jack, tertium non datur ? Either ~guaranteed~ success (in bitcoin, naturally ;P) or nothing but a cell phone video ? Why can’t there be opportunity (and associated risk!) in this endeavour as in any other ? Did anyone guarantee Theodora she’d be Queen when she starting acting and banging every dude in sight ? Did anyone guarantee you a spot at R&T when you started writing ? I think not. Gator Getters might succeed, but they’ll also miss 100% of the shots they don’t take.
Bark (btw is that short for Bartholomew?), you’re still holding on to these very controlling (and frankly sexist) notions that it’s for the man to help the woman do anything at all. Capable women, such as the ones we’re discussing here, are perfectly able to help themselves ; and so if they can, they do.
The reality of being a Gator Getter is somewhere in between the two scenarios.
My suggestion is that it is much closer to the unpleasant one.
The modern football-machine university promises a lot of opportunities to a lot of young men and women. A very minor percentage of the people who sign on the dotted line have anything but sorrow to show for it. The machine eats flesh by the ton in exchange for the money of the alumni and the television channels.
Put another way: Our prospective Gator Getter could earn more money, more consistently, by stripping, in 99% of the circumstances.
What I would suggest is that the university takes young women from very sheltered backgrounds, fills their heads full of the supposedly glory and excitement of sexually serving men who are often very confused and upset and experiencing some authentic fish-out-of-water moments, and then lets the cash register ring while nature takes its course.
“Our prospective Gator Getter could earn more money, more consistently, by stripping, in 99% of the circumstances.” << The number of strippers extant compared to the number of pro sports trophy wags around would certainly corroborate this theory, but that's exactly my point.
Gator Getters are rolling the dice in ~the exact same way~ the male athletes themselves are. Both parties are maximising their physical attributes in the ~hope~ of huge financial returns (not to mention popularity and possibly posterity). In all likelihood, neither set has the mental faculties nor the inclinations for white collar professional careers, so instead of being carpenters and waitresses, they're shooting for the stars. That so many of them miss the mark and die trying (if only figuratively) is why society respects and envies the ones who actually hit their intended targets and hustle their way into the limelight, however briefly.
Not that the rest of the post-secondary edifice isn't similarly chumpatronic…
Male, and female, NCAA athletes aren’t “rolling the dice”. NCAA athletes have a 84% graduation rate.
“tertium non datur ? ”
For those in the audience, this is Latin for “look how fucking smart I think I am!”
Because being smart is bad mkay. I mean, how are you even supposed to have conversations with smart peoples ?!!!11eleven
jz78817, don’t interrupt adults when they’re speaking. Or go breath through your mouth somewhere else.
There’s a difference between being smart and telling everyone how smart you think you are.
Whether the earthworm observes the eagle flying overhead and concludes either a) “That eagle is just so offensively acrobatic, I think he’s just showing off to spite me,” or b) “That eagle is just incredible, isn’t he ? I mean, he’s simply unrivaled in his majesty… what a specimen ! Now I know that I can’t fly like he can, but maybe, just maybe, in a million generations or so, my descendants could know such heights, but only if I work really hard in this life to provide my children and my children’s children with the best opportunities for adaption in this crazy world of ceaseless change, where one never walks into the same river twice” is entirely a problem in the mind of the earthworm.
The eagle’s going to fly regardless. Because it can. Because it must. Because that’s what eagles do. Capiche ?
Oh, Christ. I used to shove kids like you into lockers. Shoo.
being a bully isn’t something to be proud of.
Sounds like a good basic plot for a new Cohen Brothers Comedy….
-Nate
I believe the “Boz”, Brian Bosworth, wrote about this in his biography (a better book than you might think, BTW). I believe his story was about hostesses on one of his recruiting visits to some school he ended up not going to should have been wearing signs that said “I’m Whoring for State U”. This would have been in the mid-80’s.
Rob
And here I am paying for my own strippers and prostitutes like a sucker.
The smart UK fans are not gloating too much. Their coach does not have the cleanest of records (technically he never reached a Final Four before 2011 with UK). That being said, Cal probably doesn’t need to cheat anymore. He has UK’s facilities and money. Plus elite recruits are buying what he’s selling.
I’ve been on my fair share of recruiting trips and around D1 college basketball programs. Nothing surprises me anymore.
It seems reasonable to conclude that everyone involved with college and professional sports is a scumbag until proven otherwise, especially college. The NCAA’s sham of amateurism (we make billions and pay the athletes nothing) makes the term “perverse incentives” hilariously apt.
The cleanest big basketball programs in the NCAA that make Final Fours on a regular basis are Michigan State and Wisconsin. That largely stems from the guys running the programs, Tom Izzo and Bo Ryan. I may think Bo Ryan is a vampire that is dead set on ruining college basketball, but he runs a clean program.
While there may be some truth in some of what you say, as regards SOME of the people you blame, it is NOT reasonable to conclude that “everyone” (your word) is a scumbag.
Only idiots or scumbags blame everyone in a group for the sins of some of its members.
Thank God you and I didn’t coexist in New England or GB during the witch trials…you would probably be accusing me of witchcraft for not going along with your supposed common sense statements.
Instead, we live in the Internet age, where fools reveal themselves to the world, without any need for finding and exposing them.
People like you are a blight on civil discourse, and upon freedom of opinion. Your narrow minded smug self assurance stands out like a sore thumb.
However, Disinterested Observer, I will give you credit for having defended Bark’s desire to fulfill his responsibility to be a father to his daughter. So you may not really be that bad a person. But you still seem to have an axe to grind about college and pro sports, and a misguided view of JoePa though I should be more understanding of that, considering the hatchet job that was done to him by the Penn State admin, to protect themselves, and the press, to aggrandize the individuals waving their banners righteously.
But if you think that there is evidence that JoePa was complicit in Sandusky’s crimes, other than the statement of the athletic assistant who was asked why he didn’t report what he said he had seen (a crime in PA), after which he responded that he had mentioned it to JoePa.
If anybody needs a punch in the face, he, that AA, is a good candidate.
So the head coach never noticed that his assistant coach of 30 years would give Ted Bundy the creeps, and even if he did, the “legendary” head coach of a program could not fire a subordinate without approval from some nobody administrators?
No, Disinterested Observer, not everyone who molests children looks or acts like Krusty the Clown. Sandusky had a lot of other people fooled for a long time, including some powerful civic leaders in central PA, and a lot of parents. I doubt that every one of those parents was pimping out their children in the hope that Sandusky would turn them into million dollar athletes.
And there were rumors, and apparently something was observed, or suspected, because Paterno HAD fired Sandusky many years before. It was the admins who agreed to let him have the same privileges other former high ranking university personnel enjoyed, the right to continue using any and all University facilities.
Paterno had had nothing to do with Sandusky for about at least a decade prior to his arrest. And the university admins, and even a later state investigation, tried to downplay the responsibility of the school as a whole, and its leadership.
So why wouldn’t Paterno figure that once he told his boss, either if there was enough evidence to do anything, it would be done, or else that some of the people above him knew, and were maybe even involved, in which case he had no chance of conducting and publicizing an independent investigation of somethat that stunk all the way to the top.
LIKE I SAID, CITE SOME FACTS, NOT CONCLUSIONS.
If you read all the evidence that is available about Joe Paterno’s actions, and the flimsy unsubstantiated and self-serving allegations that he was a party to what was going on, you cannot help but conclude that the man was railroaded, and hounded into his grave.
There was even evidence that he had voiced some concerns to upper management at Penn State, and they told him that they would follow up on it, and that he should not act. And since he did not have unequivocal knowledge that there was actual wrong-doing, he would have been lambasted by that same administration had he gone public about something he couldn’t prove.
I used to like Penn State football. One of a handful of college football programs I liked just because of what they were and what they stood for. But after what they did to JoePa, I wouldn’t p!ss on the school if it was on fire.
According to Wiki Jerry Sandusky worked at Penn State from 1969 to 1999. I could be wrong but it is my understanding that due to the success of the football program Paterno was co-equal if not superior to any administrator there up to and including the president. If the reason you don’t like Penn State anymore is because of the way they treated a molester enabler rather than all the child molesting then there is something seriously wrong with you.
Maybe you need to be a bit more interested as an observer.
Point #1 I have never seen any evidence that showed that Paterno had any knowledge of what Sandusky was doing. The sole exception as an ex post facto case of fingerpointing by one former graduate athletic assistant who had been named as being aware, and he claimed that he had reported it to Paterno. He would have incriminated himself if he hadn’t said something like that and there was no corroboration by any other evidence.
Point #2 Paterno may have been co-equal or superior in the eyes of students or sports fans, but the fact remains that the administration signed Paterno’s checks and could have removed him, but the otherway around was never the case.
And since you accuse me of supporting a child molester, without any evidence to support your assertions about either me or JoePa, there is something seriously wrong with you.
Serious issues such as child molestation are harmed, not helped, by witch hunting…and you have added to that harm by your mindless assertions.
Like I said, become a bit more interested in what you observe, and make sure you have facts before you start pouring drivel out of your mouth that is “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing….”
maybe you should do something else than post walls of text here. ‘cos if you- in 2015- are still going to defend Joe Paterno and Penn State, then maybe it is you there is something wrong with.
How about one bit of proof from testiimony under oath by anyone other than the university officials over Paterno or that sleazy athletic assistant who admitted he knew, and when he found it it was a crime not to have reported it, swore that he had told Paterno.
Neither he nor the admins did anything about it, until they were under the gun. Then they picked on an old man who was dying from cancer.
If you don’t agree, show me some evidence, not insinuation, or uncritical acceptance of the testimony of only those people who stood to be punished if they couldn’t point the blame elsewhere.
If you cannot, SHUT UP. And if you can, PUT UP and post it here.
I have easily read dozens of articles and depositions (in their entirety), so I am not just speaking out of personal sentiment or ignorance.
Where did you get your facts and what are they, and their source? Or do you have none, only your feeling that somehow, he must have been involved. Perhaps because as one of you twits said “all college and pro sports are sleazy.” I won’t even bother to ask for proof of that statement.
I didn’t say he was “involved,” I said he had knowledge of it and did nothing.
Any parent knows that if their child wants to do something that they disapprove of badly enough, they will find a way to do it. But parents also know that they are duty bound to make their best effort to convince their children to avoid behaviors and experiences that they sincerely believe will be harmful to them, and that the parent might be better aware of than the child is.
On this one, Bark, I think you are 100% correct. I only have a son, but if I had a daughter, I too would be advising her to avoid becoming a commodity. And I have, and still do, now that he is 21, try to advise my son to modify his behavior in what I believe are ultimately his best interests.
One example being that he thinks he can bench press any time he wants, and if he gets tired, he will be able to extricate himself. I know better, and thankfully, he allows me to spot him every time, whether he is convinced or not, out of respect both for my experience and for my concern.
To do anything less would be to become a neglectful parent. (A job that continues for life, only in a different form.)
Good one, Bark!
JZ, (the one on here, not the famous one), Paterno admitted he had “suspicions” not direct knowledge, and I believe his testimony that he had taken his concerns to his superior and was told to stand down, that it would be handled by the campus police force, was corroborated. That would make your statement that he did nothing also incorrect.
But I shouldn’t be surprised that in a nation full of headline readers (and believers) that a few would wander on here, and there certainly was a concerted campaign to take the spotlight off the administration, the AA who was implicated, the school, and ultimately the state of PA, any or all of whom could have easily ended up in jail and/or liable for multimillion dollar settlements to the victims, had the blame fallen on their shoulders.
As an old school Italian guy, I am more inclined to believe that if he had known for a fact what Sandusky was doing, he would have probably pummeled him to a pulp the moment he found out. It would be a whole lot more in keeping with his character over a half a century, than that he would have known about something like that and just ignored it. In fact, if he had known, and had ignored it, then why wasn’t Sandusky still on his staff? That was what he would have done if he had ignored it.
To complain about the use of Latin in discourse or debate thirty years ago may have been a legitimate charge of elitism or intellectual elitism.
But in an age of Google and myriad other search and translation engines, even a HS voc ed student can type the phrase into a browser window and immediately find out what it means, so to complain about it is bit disingenuous (which means, pretending to have a basis for complaint when deep down you know that you could easily discover what it means, jz-numbers.
Not to mention, it seems that its meaning is clear just from its context and the widely-know root “terc-” maining three or third.
the point is Latin hasn’t been in common use for a long time outside of the Holy See. using a Latin phrase for which there is an exact equivalent English term is little more than the intellectual way to talk down to someone.
@jzz78817 It was not intended to be a swipe at you, though your perception may have understandably been colored by our having been on opposites sides of another issue.
It was simply an observation that it wouldn’t be that difficult to find out what it meant, ergo no need to complain. But it seems to me now that your BS detector was turned on and warmed up well before mine, as I see just how hard Pete goes to inform us all about how superior he is sure is, when compared to all the rest of us mortals.
A little more digging reveals that he spends a fair amount of his time with others who, like him, are adept at Bitcoin, PGP, etc., which I will freely admit is a skill that not all can attain to. But upon further reflection, I am beginning to think that I need to go a couple of pages further into Webster’s to find the correct definition for the cause of his worldview. As in turn the page from “arrogance” over to “Asperger’s”. Though I have worked with other gifted computer geeks, some of whom even thought to themselves that they were of a race or species far superior to ordinary mortals, though most of them kept those opinions to themselves most of the time, rather than trying to constantly flaunt their opinion of themselves in the face of others.
I will give him one extra data point in support of his behavior: most highly intelligent people tend to either be artistic, mathematical, or verbal. Finding someone who functions in the skinny part of the Bell curve (on the high side) in both math and verbal is even more rare than finding just one of those to be true.
On the other hand, Asperger’s can best be illustrated by a story that is popular in hacker (in the MIT sense, not the system breakin sense) circles.
A colleague once came into the story-teller’s office one Monday, and announced that he was getting married. (He was in his late twenties, and single up til that point.)
The story-teller asked him to whom? And the subject of the story replied that he had no idea, it was just that he had been thinking over the weekend, and had decided that it was time for him to get married.
The story teller concluded by saying that two or three years later, not only had his friend not married, but he still had not formed a relationship with a member of the opposite sex. In fact, he was fairly certain that his friend had still not successfully approached a woman and succeeded in getting a date.
So I will grant that Pete is not a total poser…he apparently has a good working knowledge of areas of computer science well beyond ordinary systems design, database admin, Java programming, etc.
But he still for some reason or another finds it enjoyable to go around telling the rest of the world how much smarter he figures he is in every area of life, based primarily on his achievements in a narrow, albeit difficult, field.
And behind that facade of vast superiority, it must really be lonely in there, inside his head. Though of course, if he ends up like the subject of the story I told, he professes that it won’t bother him, because people whose intelligence he admires, philosophers for example, are too smart to have children, according to him.
I guess that shows that he is smarter than his parents, at the least, and at least according to his own yardstick. (Commensuration instrumentation, Pete, if that sounds better to you.)
But back to you, jz, I still maintain that what I said about Paterno is supported by evidence in the investigatons, both official and by the press. And if you wish to convince me, or anyone else who isn’t convinced by headlines, I would like to know if you have any information to the contrary, other than the supposition that if Paterno didn’t take Sandusky down, then he must have known and must have allowed Sandusky’s behavior. But as I pointed out, Sandusky was off Paterno’s coaching staff a decade before some of the most powerful people in the state began defecting from the board of Sandusky’s youth charity. They only headed for the exits when the headlines began. Paterno disassociated himself, and if you understand university politics, Paterno was more popular than the admins with the public, especially sports fans, but that didn’t confer any power on him.
He said he reported his suspicions to his superiors, and he was told that they would have them investigated. Paterno discharged his responsibility, and it was the administration and the campus security force that investigated and said that they could find no evidence of wrongdoing.
And the athletic assistant at the center of the whole thing said that he had seen Sandusky pressing a young boy into a wall in a shower, months or years before he finally came forward to anyone other than Paterno, who immediately reported what he was told.
I have never seen any testimony or investigative reports with any facts contrary to those statements, and I don’t think that makes Paterno complicit.
If you think it does I think you standard is unrealistic, though you are entitled to hold it. But if you think that there was more than that that implicated him, like I said, I am open to reading it. But after all I have read, I have not found the “smoking gun” that does anything other than have Paterno reporting it to initiate an investigation that he did not and could not control, an investigation that gave Sandusky a pass.
Calling out Pete for pomposity early on, however, was a good call on your part, better and more accurate than mine was at first. My guess is he went to a Catholic school most of his life, and got A’s in Latin, so now he has it in his arsenal of tools to show off what an eagle he is in his own mind.
I should have seen it upfront. I used to debate in HS against guys and girls from Catholic, mostly Jesuit run, HS’s, none of them slouches intellectually, yet none of them found it necessary to toss around Latin in an attempt to show how smart they were.
No wonder Bark was reminded of HS locker pushing times. I don’t now and didn’t then condone that kind of mistreatment of essentialy clueless kids, but I can see how that kind of arrogance brings it out. It is almost as if it is intended to bring it out, in order to show what barbarians the rest of us are.
Well, I have to go polish my club now, carve some meat off of a wild hog for breakfast tomorrow, and then go lay down in the dust in my cave, next to my woman. But not until I put the fruits of my primitive hunting-gathering in a safe place, so a clever eagle doesn’t swoop down and deprive me of the fruits (or meats) of my labor. It’s damn hard for a troglodyte like myself to survive when there are eagles soaring above us, just waiting to profit from our slow-wittedness. (/sarcasm).
In in case you didn’t catch it in the midst of all that I wrote, JZ, sorry…I wasn’t trying to say that you were wrong for what you wrote that time, just that at that time I didn’t see what the big deal was to have a “tertium” floating in the punchbowl.
And Pete, buddy, I respect the skilz you have, as I am smart enough to know what it takes to function in that world, as I have often functioned in an environment not that different, github, online chat with other l33t doodz who could do what not even most IT people could do, PGP, all that stuff. Been there, done that. But you are just not that much better, in many real senses, than the people you scorn.
Since you are so smart, and seek to delve into the meaning of life, alternate ways of viewing the world and the meaning of life, etc., I challenge you to read or listen to the unabridged version of David Foster Wallace’s commencement address to the students of Kenyon college. Youtube audio or downloadable pdf, take your pick.
You might even be smarter than him, but I’ll bet you he thought of a worldview that you apparently haven’t found yet.
Bark, I admit his use of Latin was unnecessary, and a seeming affectation, but complaining about it when it is so easy to find its meaning seems to be just another form of attention-seeking to me. Of course, YMMV and you are free not to agree. But that is how both of them appear to me.
Or since I like to quote from performance artist Laurie Anderson’s work: “…and everybody on the island was saying ‘LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!’.”
Also, I didn’t see a place to post a reply there, and it has been a few weeks, but I want to thank you for your informative post about Ted Cruz. I had not dug that deeply into his background prior to your post, and it gave me a much better view of who he is and why he might possibly be the best candidate in the race.
I may have given the impression that I don’t like you very much, based on my disagreement with your assessment of men’s modern business address and the insertion of Valley-speak in a car review, but these are nothing more than appurtenances (better watch out, jz might get after me for that word.)
But while I came here first to read your brother’s work, which I really enjoy and admire, I am coming to understand that unlike so many people these days, and especially those under forty, your basic persona and moral compass are solidly pointed in the right direction.
And between the Ted Cruz piece and your analysis of Ford’s handling of the Sebring trip, I am beginning to appreciate your writing style and talent, as well.
So don’t expect me to tell you that your work is “totes cool”, but I will say that it, and the thinking that motivates it is solid. I hope that we can both count ourselves as online friends rather than adversaries, as I feel is the case with your brother and myself.
I also have to remember that you have a tough act to follow in your brother, who I think is destined to go even further in his writing career. But you have not run from, or evaded, stepping into the same arena and before a similar audience, in spite of that.
Please write more, if your work and personal schedules permit, and perhaps even branch out into some new territory. I would be anxious to see what you come up with.
Sincerely.
I disagreed with you on one topic. you needn’t keep taking swipes at me.
PS The previous was written in remembrance of, and in the spirit of, the saying that any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build one.
Keep on building. And I will endeavor to remember what a difficult task that is in a world full of critics of everything.
Bark, re: your response to Pete D. re: his flying like an eagle soaring above earthworms.
I am capable of doing things like he alludes to, or at least believe that there is some objective evidence that I am supposedly capable of doing so.
But I learned a long time ago that just because I could didn’t mean that I had too. And that when one did it in the wrong company, it was like painting a target on your back.
And though I neither pushed anyone into a locker or was pushed into any, I can thoroughly understand the impulse, when one goes out of their way to show off how smart they are, especially when presented as a way to make others feel “less than”…I can understand why such people end up getting shoved into lockers.
As a counter-example, the physicist Richard Feynman was one of the brightest physicist of his time, on a par with Einstein, Bohr and Fermi. Yet in “real life”, he was a very down to earth, pleasant person who reached out to any and all, seeking to know them on their level and to relate to, and learn from, them.
This is not just idle conjecture. My mentor, though a bit younger, knew him personally when they were both living in the Village, and he said that there were countless people who knew him as just Richard, the guy who liked to play bongos at parties, and was a better than average raconteur, but who had know idea the level of his intellectual capabiilties.
Although my abilities are not on a par with his, I do have the choice to either emulate a man like him, or to show off what a clever, pointy-headed erudite intellectual I am. I go out of my way try to follow the example of Feynman.
It is only lesser lights who feel the need to incessantly try to shine their brilliance into your face, night and day.
Feynman’s faux modesty – necessitated by the staunchly anti-intellectual (and painfully xtian) environment fostered by the USA for the better part of the last century – is precisely the type of constraining behaviour that people of exceptional ability have no patience for (unless they (un)fortuitously happened to be raised eyeball-deep in the stuff and have no means of seeing around and over it, as may well be the case here). As such, that Feynman is one of the few, if only, notable American thinkers of the past 100 years, it’s easy to see why. The Einsteins, von Brauns, and Talebs may have found refuge in your land, but a product of your land they could never be, not when they’d have been greeted with “Oh you speak another language ? Please, allow me to show you to this here locker where put terrorists like you” at every grade level.
Needless to say, the US spent the last couple of generations leveraging its natural resources, its immigrants, and its reserve currency status but today it has barely anything to show for it. You’d think that a nation as great and glorious as the US of A would be exporting more than “climate science” and “equality reports.” Where’s the great art, philosophy, science, music, dance, architecture, and culture ? Inquiring minds would like to know.
@Pete D The fact that you have no problem making pompous pronouncements about things you know nothing about, coupled with your inflated opinion of your own superiority, clearly show that you must have led a miserable loner life for most of whatever your life is.
I would not be surprised to find out that you work as a plant security guard for just above minimum wage, on a night shift, where you use your time reading to try to be able to impress others with your intelligence, or that you live in a basement apartment, or drive a 2o year old junker.
People with an attitude like yours are usually people with just a little bit of intelligence more than the average, their only asset, and who are bitter because society has not rewarded them for their self-proclaimed superiority.
I never pushed anyone into a locker in my life, but pompous assholes like yourself make me wish we had gone to HS together.
I thought Bark was a bit over the top at first when he said he used to push kids like you into a locker. But I stand corrected on that one. Bark, you were right, and I was wrong.
Though on further consideration, I think I’d rather give this douche a swirlie.
Some people seem to just naturally invite anger and disgust. There aren’t that many of them, but we have one in our midst now.
I normally like to read a variety of opinions, but in this case, I move that you and Jack consider banning this POS. I doubt there is anyone else who has posted here already who would miss him.
What a twat. Or twit. Or both.
You may be interested to learn, as long-time readers of jackbaruth.com are already aware, that my junker is actually 25-years-old, so you’re not so far off there. Where you’re further from the mark is everywhere else : society, despite your unfounded expectations to the contrary, has in point of fact rewarded me exceedingly well for my “self-proclaimed” superiority. Nothing comes from nothing, y’know.
But that’s not the story you want to believe, is it ? You want me to be less than you so you can go home to your wife in the secure knowledge that assholes like me are unworthy, poor, and insufferably lonely assholes with no one to hold them close and not a farthing to their sorry names. Your desire though that may be, reality isn’t here to conform to your shrivelled excuse for an ego and its puerile delusions. That’s just not how this works.
My bad, dude. I didn’t realize you were one of the dudes from LMFAO. Much respect.
One of the first things I encountered on his blog homepage was that it is easier to get respect if you practice what you preach.
And it doesn’t matter if he has more money than Donald Trump claims to have, and drives a fleet of Veyrons. And has a command of at least some of the more obscure and erudite-sounding parts of the English language.
When you come off like you think you are smarter than everyone else, and the only evidence of it that is apparent from what has been displayed so far is that the guy has an M-B, and you are not secure enough in your intelligence to avoid going out of your way to try to slag off everyone else who isn’t fortunate enough to be you, you not only come off as a pompous, insufferable ass…in my book, you are one.
But Bark, what is with the LMFAO stuff? An inside joke, or something similar, known perhaps only in some inner circle of a subset of car aficionados? I know what the acronym usually stands for, but your comment implies that it also means membership in some clique you either genuinely respect, or that you are being totally facetious about.
The dude claims to have a lot of money, but what has he ever done besides appear to be an idiot-savant of the English language? Any redeeming qualities at all that might make one want to listen to him rant about how anyone who isn’t him is a stupid bastard?
I mean, JD Salinger, for example, was a brilliant writer, at least in my book, yet research in recent years seems to support the idea that he was not only severely mentally ill most of his life, but also that he was a right bastard to those unfortunate enough to be part of what could loosely be called his family.
From the little bit I can recall several years after reading new revelations about Salinger, it made him sound as if living with him would have made living with Jack Nicholson’s character in The Shining like living with Mahatma Gandhi.
So again, to sum up, what evidence, if any, other than money and a large vocabulary, is there to support this insufferable egomaniac’s claim to superiority?
Feel free to jump in yourself, Pete. As no doubt you will, regardless of whether or not I ask. But it is you, Bark, whose opinion I am interested in.
It has been a long time since I have ever had to do more than put up with someone like him in passing, while in a large work environment. In my personal life? You couldn’t pay me enough. At least not from what he puts out as his supposed “best foot forward”.
I feel sorry for people who are so insecure that they feel that they constantly have to prove their superiority, but that doesn’t mean I have to allow them to poison the air around me.
Normally I don’t bring it up, but for the purpose of illustrating a point, I will. My wife and I have (tested) over 300 IQ points between us. My best friend was a direct student of Alpert and Leary and a contemporary of Andrew Weil. My best friend in my mid to late twenties in NYC was the chairman of the CS department of a world class engineering school (and the person who knew Feynman personally). Yet neither of those two guys, only the first of whom is still alive, ever came off like they were such hot sh!t that they were too smart to be bothered by other lesser morals.
I also worked on a software development project for a global telecomm giant, along with, among a few others, a British guy (think a Falstaff physique and personality), who was not only smart enough for Mensa, but was active in a few other groups that most people in Mensa aren’t smart enough to qualify for, yet he was always pleasant to work with, or to have a few beers and chat about whatever with, after work. Never acted arrogant, and only let people he knew wouldn’t be intimidated know about his membership in the “smart kids” societies…said he mostly participated in order to make contacts for his consulting business, that specialized in working on difficult to intractable real world engineering problems.
My point is that there are lots of people in this world who are probably easily as smart, or smarter, than Mr. Flying-Eagle-Sh!ts-On-Worms himself, and besides the ones I mentioned above, I have known several others. Some of them were socially awkward and a bit standoffish, others unless you knew seemed just like ordinary people, and were content to have people think of them as such.
My wife and I probably have more friends like that than most people, but we also have a lot of people who are just nice, decent people, just trying to get through life, while making it a bit better both for themselves, and others. It has been decades since I ran into anyone who went around bragging about how much smarter they were than all the stupid people they had put up with, sort of like an unfunny version of Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes saying “every day forces me to add to the list of people who piss me off.”
So how about telling us something you have done that is evidence of that claimed superiority, other than a bit of fancy wordsmithing and the ability to look down your nose at the world.
I end up conflicted as to whether I should genuinely feel pity for Pete, for the obvious insecurity that he carries around with him like a heavy knapsack, or if I should do all I can to try to show what an ultimately meaningless exhibition of high-level insipidness his act, or worldview, ultiimately is.
But I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. I’m just going to be glad that he fits the saying: “See ya! Wouldn’t want to be ya!”. Far better than that he should be my neighbor, or that I might have ended up having to work for or with someone like him for fifteen minutes.
And Pete, BTW, most of the people you rail against in this country (though of course not all), are Christian, not xtian. Xtian is just another affectation.
I’ll even bet you date all your checks with either CE, or use stardates, so as to not have to be tainted by the commonality of referring to 2015 AD. But who did what to you, to give you such a narrow and bitter outlook on life and people?
I doubt you will come out to play. But how about at least coming out and showing us just what evidence you think supports your claims to such long tail unique superiority to the rest of us.
On the way out the door, figuratively speaking, the thought just crossed my mind that if I had to guess, and only had one guess, I’d guess you must be a lawyer. If in fact you have done anything other than inherit money or work in a family business.
The lulzy part of “what evidence, if any, other than money and a large vocabulary, is there to support this insufferable egomaniac’s claim to superiority?” is that you’re not actually looking for evidence. If you were, you’d have read the words I’ve written both here and on my blog a little more closely and resigned yourself to your modest and reduced place in this world. But no, that’s too hard, too much like work. Instead, you continue with “other than sleeping with every one of her male coworkers, what makes you say that my wife is an adultress?” line of reasoning, as if words had no fucking meaning and you were free to define them however you so pleased, but without actually revealing what said definition might entail, lest its criteria be satisfied. Because that’d be cheating! And no fun! People should guess what you mean! Quelle fun!
Ok so other than financial and cultural success, what other metrics of success could VB possibly have in mind? Success in sports? Other physical feats? Travelling to some number of countries? Reading some number of books? Or reading particular books? Having some number of degrees? Or certain degrees? Starting some number of businesses? Having some number of wives and children, or some number of Facebook friends and YouTube views? How about number of hours volunteered with blind syphilitic dwarf orphans (dwarphans)? Guess what, it doesn’t matter unless you’re a really swell guy to pseudonymous randoms on the Internet! Fact!
Anyways, AD is proper, LMFAO is a rap duo, and you already had your “only one guess” with the security guard or whatever. Cheers.
Cabrera Infante, in his work “Mea Cuba” notes that Lasker, one of the greatest chess players of all time, reported that Capablanca (who probably was the greatest chess player of all time) was an extremely modest person who never adopted an attitude of superiority when around others.
Since Capablanca was a product of pre-Castro Cuba, and not the US, what is your explanation for Capablanca not extolling his eagle-like qualities, and the worm-like qualities of ordinary people?
I’m sure you will have one, it’s just that I don’t want to put words in your mouth, and honestly, I have no idea what theory you will come up with for Capablanca’s lack of arrogance. Perhaps, given your eagle-like brilliance, you would care to enlighten those of us worms who are able to look up to where you are flying high.
Hey Pete, if this country is so brain dead, and the rest of the world is so great by comparison, why is that when Feynman did a sabbatical in Brazil, he criticized the educational establishment for teaching even its Ph.D. candidate physics students only to learn by rote. He pointed out that none of them in his class could answer how to determine the direction of polarity of a piece of polarized lens without any other equipment, and without cutting the lens or bending it. That even though all the information they needed to know was known to the average undergraduate physics student there and here. They just didn’t know how to reason.
Sort of like you, huh? Lots of pompous words, but nothing of substance except venom and faux superiority.
What country to you believe to be such an intellectually superior environment, and why aren’t you living there if you are so smart?
Oh, and Pete, the holes in your logic are large enough to drive a large American SUV through.
Those people who you say could never have been a product of our country, had they been, would not have been speaking a foreign language, and hence potentially subjected to the scenario you so fancifully created out of the dark recesses of your overactive imagination.
Please tell me one thing that you have achieved in your life that we might be impressed by. I am sure I am not the only one who thinks you sound like a pathetic loser. But then in your mind, I guess that doesn’t make you obnoxious, it makes you a victim who is being ganged up on, because of his greatness, being, of course, a legend in your own mind.
Pete D,
I don’t need to guess…there were enough breadcrumbs on the trail that I didn’t even need to use any specialized tools to figure out the type of stuff you usually do, or at least one part of it. And as I said, I respect that part, as, believe it or not, I have been a part of it too, though as I have gotten older, and have a wife and son I enjoy hanging out with, I have drifted away from that world. Though a couple of decades ago, I was doing the kind of thing you do now online, and apparently at least part of the time IRL.
But yes, any or all of the things you listed. Because I guess I am trying to figure out if you have another whole life doing things that really make a difference to someone, anyone, especially anyone besides just yourself, in the world.
If you really do work with blind syphilitic children, for example, I am truly impressed, in spite of whatever harsh attitudes and air of superiority you toss around. But if it is just another clever made up phrase to illustrate the kind of thing that theoretically might be considered an achievement, then I am still not impressed with your verbal adagios.
BTW, it seems from some of those logs you posted online that you might have caught something from someone else who may have just signed the haxxor equivalent of “Kilroy was here” on your box. Seriously.
I do agree that Windoze in its raw form is an open door, but there are tools that can change that, as do careful habits and the willingness to stay away from certain places. And as somebody else said to you, *nixes aren’t that hard to hack either, even if you are good AND careful. Ditto Apple. They are a bit more fundamentally sound, but for every lock that has been made, sooner or later there is a locksmith or thief that learns how to open it. And for every lock that has been opened, there is a locksmith or admin who has figured out how to shut that hole. The beat goes on…
If you want me to believe that you have more as your claim to universal knowledge and wisdom, other than your computational abilities, I would like to see them, if only to see if I can find any redeeming value in you to offset your arrogant pompousness about anything and everything. NOBODY is that smart about everything, ergo you of necessity seem to think that you are near perfect in more things than you really are.
And FWIW, there was a great article on the topic of sucking that was on the internet just shortly after it ceased being DARPANET, that was better than any of the stuff you found by far. I would send it to you, but I long ago ditched it, as I have been with the same woman for two decades now, and while our son was growing up and learning to use computers, there were a lot of things I didn’t want or need to leave laying around, so it went into the bit bucket.
But I seriously and sincerely challenge you to spend the twenty plus minutes listening, or for you probably about three minutes reading, the ten or so pages of David Foster Wallace’s commencement address. Just be sure you get it in the unabridged form, it deserves to be absorbed in its entirety. I will bet you he talks about a world view you haven’t considered before. I know that even with stack of 99th per centile tests, etc., the idea had escaped my attention, and I am probably older, and hence have been around longer, than you have.
It might, it just might, cause you to consider whether or not you are smarter and better than almost everyone almost all the time. That could be a dangerous and threatening thing to you, I understand, all joking aside. But I challenge you to see if you are bold enough to look at it, and smart enough to consider its ramifications.
And no, in advance, it does not appeal to doing things because they are “right” or “morally correct” or anything like that. Far more abstract, and with even deeper ramifications, built on top of a logical argument.
If you do read it, I would be curious to see if you feel like it deserves to be ripped and scorned, as beneath you, or if you see something that all your cleverness hadn’t found yet, but that has real value. Ball’s in your court…
“There is no try. Only do or not do.” No tertiums on this one, chief.
The rest of the story…of Pete D.
Or as was told to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate: “Plastics”.
Only for Pete, it is “Glass” and/or “Glazing”.
I will rest my case as to what is or isn’t wrong with this self-proclaimed eagle soaring above a world of us worms, but invite you to see Pete speaking of his grand achievement, and his hopes and dreams for his future. It is quite short, just over a minute and half.
And Bark, if you look at the following, you might even discover that it actually may be someone you might have shoved into a locker in the past.
It is a trip, and I use that word sparingly in conversation, when it is referring to anything other than travel between two points.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZJz-t6F_X0
How many years of Theatrics/Drama/Elocution, whatever, did you have, Petey-boy?
That is some high camp, lad.
LMFAO 4 rill.
And the rest of you whom I think of as the inner circle of the B&B, trust me on this, it is worth a minute and half of your time.
But warning: WARNING! DO NOT drink a milkshake while you are watching this, unless you enjoy the smell of milkshake in your nose. And if you are drinking anything while you watch this on a PC, rest assured your KB will likely be ruined.
Just skip the beverages for a minute and half and sit back and enjoy.
And I will give Pete one thing. He is NOT like most of the rest of us.
His attempt at projecting himself as being some sort of intellectual superman is beginning to look more and more like a psychological defense mechanism each minute that goes by.
I actually do respect some of the things he is into, if he is in fact as proficient in them as he seems he might be. It is his pompous claim to total superiority over all and everything, that I find totally annoying.
But see for yourself.
Jack, you may think this is too much Pete already. But I would like to encourage you to put up a poll about what your readers’ reactions are to Pete, after they see his video, and after reading his announcement of his personal superiority to the rest of the world.
Please, Jack? I make it a policy never to beg, not even my wife. But I am begging you to give your readership a chance to give this unique individual a chance to see himself as others see him.
And Bark, this is a freebie, but I hope finding this tidbit will help make up for some of the flack I have given you in the past about the number of buttons on mens’ suits and Valley speak.
Peter is a very intelligent young man and I don’t think he is under any misapprehension as to how the world views him or, indeed, most people who are more intellectual than they are social.
The crux of the disagreement here is that Peter views the Internet as a place to perform experiments of a sort and to speak in terms of theory and generalities. Bark and I tend to view it as an extension of our physical lives. I don’t say things to people online that I’m not prepared to share with them personally. I’ve also long since learned that you cannot rely on people to not take the things you say as offensive or deliberately harmful.
What Peter is saying is something theoretical: if Bark’s daughter has the “goods” to be a Gator Getter, shouldn’t she be allowed to do it? Bark views it as a direct attack on his daughter. Neither of them is operating from a position of bad faith, which is why I haven’t censored anyone or terminated the discussion.
I would argue that Pete is under misapprehension as to who he is and what his place in the world is, Jack.
I am not doing this to attempt to doxx Pete, something I would only do in retalation for like prior conduct, but rather I am taking all of this from publicly available information that is limited to Pete’s background and achievements.
He apparently did in fact receive what is commonly alluded to as a classical education…including Latin and a decent exposure to literature and the history of civilization. Yes, that does mean that unless he slept through all of his classes, he probably has a better education than most people receive in school. It does not, however, take into account, the amount of self-education that many others may have done outside of their public school educations.
He comes from a family that appeas to have its historical roots in Eastern Europe, and one that migrated to Canada prior to Pete’s generation. I can only speculate as to why this fact would leave him with the idea that he is superior to “us Americans” who, according to him, squeeze every bit of pride out of true geniuses such as Feynman.
But his family, or at least more than one member of it, seems to have not only become members of the medical establishment, but based on obituaries and school alumni writeups, were prominent members of the medical establishment. They might even merit the label of being “an eagle”. But does Pete, who for a brief period before he began marketing Bitcoins and glass curtains, was a health inspector in Alberta, qualify him as being an eagle based on his achievements in the field of health? I don’t think so, and I doubt that anyone other than Pete woudl think so.
But credit where credit is due…while there, he posted the lowest gross golf score in the health department’s annual golf tournament. For all I know, he may have even eagled in that tournament. But I don’t think it places him in the stratosphere of the Richard Feynmans, Capablanca, von Braun, etc. Nor does being in the vanguard of marketing glass curtains, with an advertised energy saving of three to five per cent over standard curtains. Nor does being able to discuss (admittedly at least holding up his end of the conversation) blocksizes in the Bitcoin scheme of things. And I find no other evidence of his involvment in computer technology.
More than anything else, he seems like a brighter than average kid from a family that has amassed a bit of wealth by virtue of their intelligence and hard work. And subsequently, that family enabled him to get a stricter than average solid formal education, at least through the HS level (I couldn’t find any college affiliations for Pete). Pete chooses to parlay that limited bit of knowledge (that goes beyond the education of what I would call mere mortals, and Pete would call worms), as a way to strut about like a banty rooster, crowing that he flies with the eagles, all the while struggling to squash worms beneath his feet, while mistaking those worms for ordinary people who either didn’t have Latin offered in their school, or, like me, got bad grades and gave up after the seventh grade. (I do want to point out that in spite of the fact that my seventh grade post-polio penmanship wasn’t good enough for my strict teacher’s high standards for a Latin workbook, I did subsequently manage to study (and self-study) enough to be fluent, perhaps even proficient, in Spanish, so I don’t think that one seventh grade foray proves that Pete is superior to me in language skills.
So to sum up, Jack, I think Pete is under the misapprehension that his is both intellectually and morally superior to people such as Bark and myself, when in fact he is just a snotty-nosed overgrown kid with a slightly higher than average IQ and an inflated opinion of how smart his classical education makes him.
If he simply took positons that I (and I presume Bark) disagreed with, I/we would argue/debate with them on the merits of their and our positions, as I did with Bark when I though he was wrong in asserting that the three button men’s suit was archaic, or as I did with jz and Disinterested, concerning what might have been conjecture vs. evidence against Joe Paterno. And if we never get to the same page, I, and presumably they, are willing to agree to disagree.
But Pete has clearly gone beyond that pale…attacking Bark for trying to be a good father who seeks to provide good guidance to his daughter, attacking Feynman as being forced to be nice (laughable I am sure to anyone who, like my mentor, knew him personally), attacking all of America as being racist and forcing conformity on everyone of external origin (my good friend of Mexican birth and ancestry would choose to disagree with him on that), and attacking the 99 plus per cent of us he feels are “worms” that interfere with his attempts to find a clean place to land his eagle #ss.
And for his gross misapprensions, culminating in his assertion that he is an eagle (with little to know evidence to support that), and his assertion that most of the rest of the world is beneath, he deserves to be exposed as anything but an eagle…he is, in the end, a pathetic little kid in a young man’s body, deliberately provoking backlash to reinforce his assertion that world is against true geniuses such as himself (based entirely on his classical education, his early adoption and promotion of glass curtains, and his small Bitcoin business.)
Oh, did I mention that one of his business ventures is equipping one of his I believe it is up to four, Bitcoin business customers, with the opportunity to sell Bitcoin “gift cards” worth 50 Bitcoins, for the low price of $55.55. Even if it is 55.55 Bitcoins, you can see the lack of value proposition. But if it is dollars, even Canadian ones, it is a much worse deal, unless he has reduced the price.
He claimed that Bitcoins went up 800 percent in value in I think it was 2013, but according to FX websites, BTC’s haven’t been worth anywhere near a dollar since well before then, and at a recent time were worth less than a penny a piece, I believe. And in any case, certainly the trend in value has been downward, though there have been occasional bounces. Almost like a tamagochi dead cat bounce, with ninety times nine lives, but basically not anything you could look at the historic market and say “Wow, I have to get in on this right away.” Which probably explains why he has branched out to glass curtain marketing, though I can’t for the life of me see why this eagle didn’t continue to carve out an eagle-like career in the field of health.
Or, as I have said before, “eagle my *ss!”.
As I have said before, Jack, I think you are one of the brightest people I know, and I tend to know probably more than the average person, by virtue of my career, but I think you sometimes tend to try a bit too hard to see the good in every person, when in fact, there are some people out there who are just plain posers or self-deluded., Zola could go either way…the story was clearly designed and located in such a venue that it would inevitably appear to be on the edge of reality. But Pete is just a poser, cleverly positioning himself to appear as the misunderstood and persecuted genius, when in fact, he brings his persecution on himself, and his genius consists almost entirely of having had a classical education, and being an early adopter of Bitcoin. Neither of these make him a genius, or an eagle…just a pathetic little whiner with an unmeritied sense of superiority to most of the world.
And though I have felt compelled to rebut his assertions with a review of the Emperor’s new clothes, I really do feel sorry for Pete, now that I see what a pathetic little hand he has been left to play. He seems to have nothing else to support his belief that he is superior, except for his amateur golf skill and his Latin, neither of which are going to afford him an interesting or outstanding life.
And he is lucky to have you as one who considers him a friend, as I suspect he doesn’t get many friends, with an attitude like his. And I hope that my disagreement with you on this one point won’t adversely affect whatever friendship we have. It is in the spirit of friendship that I feel I have to “pull your coat” to the fact that Pete is a master deceiver who lacks much of what he claims for himself, though he manages to present a plausible facade. But the substance just isn’t there, not even to justify an eccentric genius with severe Asperger’s…just a kid with an inflated ego, I’m afraid, and one that goes out of his way to make enemies in order to fulfill his claim that he is a persecuted genius. If he can give the appearance of a bit of genius, and can manufacture enough blowback to appear persecuted, he hopes no one will call into question the actual merits of his claims to superiority.
But when you attack good parenting, the entirety of my country, my knowledge of the true nature of someone like Feynman, a friend’s daughter (and I do consider Bark to be an online friend, even though I disagree with one of his fashion pronouncements), and you go out of your way to say that almost everyone who isn’t like you is a worm, and you are just getting warmed up…to me that is when it is time to get out the microscope and see just exactly who we are really dealing with. And Pete doesn’t hold up very well to his claims of inherent superiority, based in his reality vs. his claims.
There are no words, not even in Latin, to describe how much joy I derive from your impotent flailing on google and your infantile insistence on holding your breath and stomping your hooves until someone, anyone, agrees with you, thus validating your worthless energetic expenditures – though I suppose “Schadenfreude” comes closest.
As ever, reality isn’t here to conform to you, but you to it.
Well Pete I got my data from a couple of widely used general purpose foreign exchange sites, not a special purpose, Bitcoin oriented one. Still there is a possibility that I swung and missed on that one. Don’t have time to research it further now, but I will.
But I think if you look here or over on TTAC, I get mixed reviews, not preponderantly negative ones.
But if anyone, yourself included, wants to see how the general public receives your offerings, and the responses to your absurd claim of being an eagle soaring over us worms, I would refer them, and you, to the comments to your article on TTAC on 4/1/2012, when you waffled as to whether or not your two car reviews were an April Fool’s joke, when you started getting a lot of negative feedback.
But the fact remains that almost to a person, out of somewhere around a hundred replies (the exact number isn’t in front of me), almost EVERY ONE OF THEM said things like “it looks like you got your @ss handed to you.” when you whined about Toyota’s and BMW’s response to your work product from your time spent in their vehicles at their expense.
Really, people, go see them, and if you have ever seen a more unintentionally hilarious car review anywhere, please post it here so I can go find it and have as good a laugh as I did when I say Pete being overwhelmed by the response of all those “worms” who found his eagle to be a laughable imitation of a car reviewer.
But what really outstanding accomplishments did I leave out of your eagle resume, Pete? And what other part did I get wrong?
That your family has several prominent, accomplished members in the health field, and that you rose to the level of health inspector in that same field? I never said you had to depend on your family connections to get there, just that I didn’t find that to be particularly eagle-like.
Or perhaps that your online presence in the field of computer science seems to be limited to discussions on the effect of changing the blocksize of a component of Bitcoins? Do you have other computer skills or accomplishments that you have been hiding from the “worms” because you fear we couldn’t understand them? Why not try to describe them, if they exist, and let us decide.
Or would you rather just ignore my rebuttal to your absurd statement as to the reason that Feynman was a modest genius, with my counterexample of Capablanca. Clearly he wasn’t subjected to pressure as a foreigner in the US, as throughout his career he dwelled almost entirely in Cuba, Spain and other parts of Western Europe.
Come on, Pete, even though you have promoted me from a worm to a creature with hooves, I am not flattered enough to let you off the hook from your absurd, snide and snarky claims of superiority.
Address the issues, Pete.
And I promise you, I will be back with either a correction of my mistake regarding BTC valuation, and an apology for it, or I will post other, more general FX sources that fail to support the figures you offered.
Though I suppose if your viewpoint is correct, you must be a multimillionaire by now, right? Or did you miss the year long market turn? Or was it that your eagle-like accomplishments took so much of your time that you failed to be remunerated adequately by society, and hence were bereft of the funds needed to capitalize on the runup?
If you want to be worshipped as an eagle, you need to do a better job of advertising to the “worms” and those of us suspected of having “hooves” and perhaps even “tails”.
Though last time I checked, as a card-carrying member of “xtian society”, I am not burdened with hooves and a tail, nor am I burdened with horns, either.
Why don’t you just come off your high horse, Pete, and maybe people could tolerate you, at least enough to just consider you another eccentric and variably-talented member of the new millenial society, instead of a grating and pompous self-deluded collection of hollow arrogant assertions.
Because it is not your lack of great, noble achievements, or even your shallow car reviews, that brings out the animosity and scorn towards you from others. It is almost entirely a result of your repeated claims of inherent superiority over others who are as bright as you, and in some cases, even much more so.
And your claims that all truly great people are compelled to extol their excellence far and wide, and those that do not are either not talented, or are forced into modesty by external pressures from an oppressive “xtian” society.
Really, man, come off it. Dare to let people see you for who you are, and take a chance that people might find you at least faintly amusing, instead of a chronic irritant, by virtue of your pompous attitude.
My fiery friend, the answers to all your questions, and more, are here. The task before you, should you really be as curious as your claim, is no more than the combined word count of the Lord of The Rings Trilogy – if considerably more varied and unpredictable, bordering on outright stochasticity – and growing evermore. Needless to say, it shouldn’t take you more than 35 hours if you’re reading at the average person’s average pace of 200 wpm, which I dare say is a fine benchmark in this particular endeavour.
There are no cliffnotes in the real world. Thank God for that.
Congrats on alternately looking like RedFoo and a less-masculine version of Alan Cumming, depending on the iteration of yourself that you’re peddling at the given moment.
Given that the douche-level has reached 11 a long time ago, here, I think it’s time to close the comments. Thanks for playing.
“The crux of the disagreement here is that Peter views the Internet as a place to perform experiments of a sort”
we call people like that “assholes.”
Totally agree with you on that, jz78817. And respect you for your willingness to provide an unbiased review of the Emperor’s new clothes.
Jack, you are right in a general and abstract way. But don’t forget that one of Pete’s “experiments” included going out of his way, with no evidence to support it, to state that he doubted that Bark’s daughter was very attractive.
I have disagreed with Bark on relatively trivial things, such as the acceptable number of buttons on a modern man’s dress suit, or the use of Valley-speak by a grown man, but I am with him one hundred per cent on this.
Pete seems to think that by attacking any and everything that many people hold dear, he is showing himself a free thinker who is exposing hypocrisy. But I think jz78817 provides a much clearer and simpler explanation of the behavior: total @ss-holeness, used as a defense mechanism for a total inability to get along with most, if not all, people.
And for the record, I think I may have given Pete way too much credit for his “achievements” in the computer world, based almost entirely on one session log where some technical arcana of Bitcoin algorithm redesign was discussed.
Seems his main claims to fame are (a) the ability to get a rise out of people by being an asshole, and hiding behind the claim that he is conducting social experiments; and (b) he has managed to position himself as the marketing manager for a “not new, giant, economy, vastly improved” way of making curtains for interior designers.
In his own words, while curtain design has remained stagnant for years, glazing technology has made giant advances, hence “glass curtains”.
So Jack, its your blog, but if it turns into nothing more than a place for the worst of FB style slagging contests, the quality I came here for will be seriously compromised.
And if Pete’s ego gets fueled by what he might consider success in waging his “social experiments” amongst your other followers, I would expect that, like bad money driving out good, too much Pete D will result in a decline in participation by others who manage to take different viewpoints, and disagree, while not finding it necessary to insult each other, people’s countries, their religions, the attractiveness of their children, and any and every other thing that might qualify as a button to press.
For the most part, if that occurs and I wish to still be able to interact and exchange ideas, info, and greetings with others I admire and respect on here, there is always the site where I first found you, and where many of them still post.
And I may even continue to read here, but will probably close the tab the minute I see a diatribe about how f’ed the rest of us, compared to Pete’s brilliant and successful life, driving a W124 and selling glass curtains. (I wonder if he likes them because people can look in and catch a glimpse of, and admire, his fabulously successful career as a social agent provocateur and glass curtain promoter.)
And just to clarify, I think a couple of people here are well-intentioned but deeply uninformed about the facts surrounding Joe Paterno and the Sandusky case, but I don’t find their attitudes and positions offensive, just uninformed, and I don’t find their attitudes to be personally offensive.
Pete, on the other hand, has offensiveness, under the guise of social experimentation, as his primary raison d’etre, (reason for being, in case you weren’t born in French Canada, or weren’t fortunate enough to have encountered it before…and for the record, I don’t think that makes me better than you, unlike Pete, who thinks that means you are groveling in the dirt well beneath him, down where his sh!t lands.)
And I will repeat one more time for anyone who thinks that something of significant value might be worth about twenty minutes of their time, find and read or view the unabridged version of David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech. It is a tour de force argument for why it might be in one’s self interest to stop considering oneself as the pinnacle and center of the universe, a viewpoint he calls “the default view”.
It is a highly-intelligent and well-reasoned argument for being almost diametrically opposite to the kind of attitude Pete D carries around like a sword and shield, in any and all of his interactions with those around him, at least online. (Unless, of course, you happen to be one of his rare “eagle” friends.)
To bad there isn’t such a thing as intellectual rugby…I would gladly try to field a team from people I have know, and let Pete do the same, and watch his eagle @ss get stomped into the ground before he could ever gain any altitude.
Or as jz said, “we call them @ssholes.”
@jz77817 It is because you aren’t afraid to puncture pompous @ssholery, that I hope you won’t let the opinions expressed by Rodney end up causing you to leave entirely.
While I may disagree with you at times, I welcome the fact that you have opinions, and are willing to try to marshal facts to support them. Even the ones I don’t agree with, as I want to see if there are arguments I find compelling, but which I may have overlooked.